


don't belong

by Voidromeda



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Canon, Hugs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 12:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18873262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Voidromeda/pseuds/Voidromeda
Summary: Managing to escape the Galran empire with the aid of the Blade of Marmora, Shiro finds himself taken in the by the resistance group and finds himself befriending the son of one of the officers - a half-breed Galra by the name of Keith.





	don't belong

Scratching lines into the walls is a pointless endeavour, the arena surrounded by an endless artificial brightness that blurs Shiro’s vision and makes loss all the more possible. The burning brightness sears itself into his retinas, makes spots dance alongside the person he has to brawl with in the arena, and Shiro’s hands twitch as he brings them close to his own face, burying his head into his palms and exhaling. There are no horizontal lines stabbing through the vertical lines, and Shiro just drags sharpened rocks down moldy, decrepit walls to add in more and more lines.

The scratch of rock on old wall is loud, echoing in his cell, and his cellmate, a new one, twitches at every single scratch and scritch of Shiro’s carving. His grip around the rock tightens, feels it dig into scabbed cuts on his palm and open them up anew, and he uncurls his fingers finally and let the rock drop down onto his rickety, rigid bed. He falls onto his side, curls into himself, and feels goosebumps run across his skin and he trembles.

His cellmate sobs about something in its own tongue, the ship’s built-in translator struggling to catch the mumbled, warbled cries and wails. His mind drifts.

* * *

“What are you _doing!_ ” Shiro screeches as he is dragged away by Galran troops, their grips bruising and fingertips digging into his arms, one standing behind him to jab at him with guns. They speak to one another in their own tongue, and Shiro yells, “I’m supposed to be out in the arena! I’m not supposed to be here! I’m not supposed – _I’m not meant to be here!_ ”

The Galran troops are still talking to each other, the door in front of them hisses as it slides open, and Shiro’s heart leaps into his throat. Slumped over with sickly, wrinkled skin, and fingers long enough to be spider legs, Haggar stands before him – her hair curtains her, dried and stiff, lips in a flat line and split open by a cut that reveals teeth.

She eyes him, her footsteps barely making a sound as she shuffles closer to him – a hand rests on his face, turns his head side to side, and Shiro jerks his himself way and tries to slam his forehead onto the witch. Purple tendrils wrap around his throat, hanging loosely as they throb and pulse against him, and Shiro is let go by Galran troops as violet circlets slam themselves around his wrists and hold him up.

Haggar waves behind her, and the other witches are bustling about. Doctors, one of whom looks at Shiro with an open mouth and wet eyes before schooling itself, rush about in the room as well. A table rises up from the centre of the room, a cloth set on it, and a different type of table is wheeled in past him.

His eyes briefly catch onto glints of metal.

 

And he screams.

* * *

There are colours flashing behind his eyelids, making them flutter before they slowly drift open, and Shiro flinches at the sudden illumination. “Turn the lights down!” someone barks out, voice made of Galran smoke and gunpowder with roughened edges, and Shiro is gasping when the lights are dimmed down to an almost sunset glow. Black blotches paint his vision, before contracting into dancing, black spots that are gone after a few blinks. When he reacquaints himself with the world, it is to the sight of people in bodysuits covered with light armour, wearing masks with endlessly staring eyes.

His breath stutters into his chest.

“The Champion’s a human.” the voice says, “I thought… doesn’t matter.” there are heavy footfalls to his right and Shiro lifts his aching, weary body up. The world rushes, blood slams against his veins, and when he falls over it is into the arms of the person at his right. “Champ – uh, Human?”

He looks up.

Golden eyes strip him bare, a human-like face stares at him, and the hands cradling him are careful, gentle. When the man looks around, takes in the other men who are slow in taking their own masks off and revealing their Galra faces, Shiro opens his mouth.

His scream refuses to come out, and the man whose arms he is in tries to shush him, his eyebrows pinching together and he looks up at the other Galra who maintain a considerable distance from them both before he is looking back down at Shiro. “Hey,” the man says, “I’m the one who saved you. I’m…” he hesitates, his eyes flicking over to a Galra with black pupils in golden sclera then back, “I’m Keith. We’re not here to hurt you.”

The Galra back away when Shiro’s cybernetic hand raises up, the fingers twitching and freezing, curling into a very loose claw before they ease out and he is quick to jerk his hand back. His flesh hand lays useless by his side, weighed down by his thoughts and the frantic beat of his heart, and he stares into Keith’s apologetic gaze. His gloved hand reaches out for Shiro’s scarred one and brings up to place it on his cheek, and he gasps.

His skin is dry underneath his palm, a bit of his hair strokes across his knuckles and the top of his hand, like silk available for his reach, and Shiro lets out a heavy sob, eyes slipping shut as tears well up. “We’re real, Champion, we promise. We’re not going to hurt you.”

He takes his hand back only to throw both his arms around Keith, hugging him tightly even as the other stiffens up. He can feel the way his hands hover above Shiro’s back, feels the feather-light strokes of his palms before they are falling to Keith’s sides, and he lets Shiro soak his shoulder with his tears.

“You’re safe now. We’re going to get back at those Galra bastards. I promise.”

 

 

He hopes so. He really, really hopes so.

* * *

The Galra that he has run into are called the _Blade of Marmora._ Keith faffs about trying to explain who or what Marmora is, why it is that they are called the Blade of Marmora, and the only thing he explains is the blade part by enthusiastically revealing his weapon and slicing off Shiro’s overgrown hair.

It is a terrible job, all things considering. It is way better than nothing. They oddly enough do have razor blades to allow Shiro to shave his stubble off and let his face be clean and pristine again, and all the Galra – even Keith, the most human looking of them all – have seemed oddly bothered by him shaving his face. It is only when Krolia – who he recalls is Keith’s mother – explains to him that the Galra aren’t used to mammals like him being mostly hairless. “Even Keith finds his human form odd,” Krolia says to him while he is trying to drink the goopy milkshake given to him, “and I guess… well, don’t you mind me. Shirogane –”

“You can call me Shiro, it’s fine –”

“— how have you been?” her gaze is gentle, her honeyed gaze looking at him carefully, a hand hovering near his tense back that Shiro nods and allows her to gently pat. The milkshake settles heavy in his stomach when he considers how to answer Krolia, almost cowing away from the warmth in her eyes, and she exhales heavily. “I’ll call Keith –”

He jolts. “I didn’t mean –”

“Drink the Kerplin shake.” she barks out, her eyes sharp but a smile tugs on her face, and Shiro closes his mouth with an audible click of his teeth. “Everyone absolutely hates it when I make it for them, but it is the most nutritious and efficient thing to eat. Taste does not matter when it comes to health.”

Shiro flinches, yelping when she playfully smacks his back then she is gone, her long limbs walking her away from him faster than he can run, and he slumps his shoulders. He isn’t left alone for long as Keith is slinking in after, looking like an agitated hamster as he skitters around Shiro and wrings his gloved hands together.

They stare at each other for a while, Keith’s gaze focusing on Shiro’s face even as his eyes flick downward every few moments then back up, and he himself is currently attempting to swallow down more of the healthy, toxic sludge that Krolia has modestly called “food”.

“Shiro,” Keith tries after a while, the blade drifting over to him and plopping down heavily next to him, taking up the seat made vacant by Krolia, “my mom – I mean, Commander Krolia says that you… um. You need help…” he presses his palms together then brings them up to his face, eyes staring over the top of his fingers. He clicks his tongue, growls, and Shiro is _still_ just trying to swallow down the fetid mud in his esophagus.

“Commander Krolia never tells this to the newcomers,” he says abruptly, the words blurting out almost far too quickly for Shiro to keep up with, “but water actually reacts with it in a way that it, like, gets rid of the compound that makes it really thick and smelly, but it doesn’t make it unhealthier or less nutritious.

“It just makes a small minor change that makes it way easier to stomach.” Keith reaches down into one of the bags hanging loosely around his frame, the bags he never takes on missions because they make him ‘too heavy’. Shiro keeps it to himself that Keith looks like a thirty kilogram ten year old. “Here, try it. Watching you struggle is too painful.”

He rasps out a venomous ‘thanks, Keith’ with no real punch behind it before he is grabbing the water, slurping up some shake, and then guzzling down said water like a man starving in the Sahara desert. Both liquids slide down with extreme ease that when Shiro is done going back and forth between the shake and water, he is almost flabbergasted by how quickly he is finished with the Kerplin shake.

Besides him, there is a burst of laughter that makes him jolt, the empty containers for both water and shake falling from his hands and clattering noisily on the floor, and the laughter just gets way louder.

When he turns to sass Keith, the words die on the tip of his tongue when he sees the flush spreading across his face, the large grin his mouth is split into as he laughs, the way his hair flows and weaves around him like liquid silk, his long lashes as his eyes close from mirth, and the way he curls into himself to try and keep from falling over.

Keith turns his head over to peek up at him, cheeks reaching all the way up to his golden eyes from how widely he is grinning, and Shiro huffs indignantly. “Drinking these shakes is no laughing matter, Keith,” he says sagely as he picks the shake container up again, presenting it to Keith like he is Professor Holt, and he resumes speaking, “now I understand why it is that all you blades look as terrifying as… er.”

He stops.

Keith stares.

“… as something _very, very scary_ in Galran culture.” he finishes. Keith rolls his eyes. “Therefore, when a soldier – like I, naïve and innocent and _blissfully ignorant_ of the… cursed blessings of The Shake™ -”

“How did you do that with your mouth?”

“You should treat him with _respect._ Instead of laughing at my face.”

Keith snorts, his hands resting underneath his armpits and he tilts his head to the side. “Well, soldier, you looked like someone showed you what Paradise looked like before kicking you back out.”

“Was I really that surprised?”

“Yes. Yes you were. I wish I had a pictocuria so that I could capture it, honestly.”

“A what?”

 

 

It is then that Keith, bizarrely, gets into the history of explaining how a pictocuria is really just a camera that, due to the at time traditional monarch of Galra government, got the name “pictocuria” instead of the much favoured and easier to pronounce camera. Some things are apparently hard to shake off, even if people prefer the word ‘camera’.

Galra history and culture is definitely interesting, and he hopes that Keith will get more opportunities to just share like this with him.

* * *

“Do you think it’s possible that the Galra empire will win?” Shiro asks him at the dead of night, when they are both aboard the Marmora’s newest headquarters and Keith is juggling all of his new duties – Krolia wants him to take over as Commander so that she can step down and take one of the smaller roles, Kolivan is arguing with them both so that Krolia instead takes over as the leader of the Marmora and him the right-hand man…

… there are a lot of things happening right now that when Shiro speaks of the Galra empire, Keith is almost jolted out of his own reality – deep within his own head, drowning in endless paperwork and arguments, with his mother, Kolivan, with everyone else who don’t want Krolia to step down or those who doubt Keith’s youth – and back next to the once-again Black Paladin. He stares up at the clock, the one attuned to Earth time (from what Pidge and Matt have been able to glean) and then looks back to Shiro before he shrugs.

“Maybe.” is what Keith says, the word ringing hollow and echoing in the empty meeting room, and Shiro doesn’t look away from the gaze outside. From here, they can almost see the edges of the Andromeda galaxy, full of dust and fragmented rocks and gases, and Keith rubs the back of his neck before he is advancing closer to Shiro.

His footsteps ring loudly in the room; Shiro looks over his shoulder to stare at Keith before he is looking back at the outermost radii of the Andromeda. “You know, it’s an old song, but this is making me think about it.” Shiro’s voice is soft, almost inaudible if not for Keith’s heritage, and he tenses up. “Take it in your heart now, lover,” Shiro sings, his hand coming up to tuck hair behind his ear, and Keith looks away, “take it in your heart.”

“You should introduce me to Earth songs later.” Keith says. “I’ll show you some Galran ones if you’d like.” Shiro looks up at him then down at his feet, and he shrinks further into himself. “… we’re not going to lose,” he continues on, even as Shiro just lets out a soft grunt in response, “we won’t let the Galra win. Not now, not again. Okay?”

Shiro finally stands up proper, back straight even as he winces, and he lifts jittery hands to run through his short, mismatched hair. “Are we really going to be okay?” Shiro asks again. “I haven’t – I haven’t been feeling well, and I’m just bringing everyone down.” it is then that he lets out a heavy exhale and he is falling over onto his right, and Keith yelps and scrambles closer to Shiro, arms lashing out to grab onto him and balance him.

“Quiznak, Shiro, the fuck!” Keith blabbers out as his knees nearly buckle out from underneath him, his hands scrambling to try and position Shiro in such a way that will keep them both from tumbling out onto the floor, and he huffs when he manages to straighten up enough and make Shiro bend his knees to actually let them stand. “What were you thinking?”

Humourlessly, Shiro laughs. “You’re always going to catch me if I fall, aren’t you?” he asks sharply, and Keith looks down into deep silver, sees the ghost of a smile, and his breath catches in his throat. “Even if I go off the deep end, right?” Shiro asks again, and Keith swallows down the lump building in his throat. “I don’t feel like myself anymore,” he says in hushed tones and with half-lidded eyes, “and I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re just stressed, Shiro.” Keith tries to reason, his grip on Shiro tightening to the point that he will have bruised him if not for his bodysuit, “you… you need a small break, I think everyone in Voltron does. I know they do.” Shiro opens his mouth, tongue lifting up before laying flat and his lips form into a tight, flat line soon after. A self-deprecating smile paints itself across Shiro’s face and he huffs in laugh.

He is standing up properly soon after, a hand on Keith’s shoulder to turn him around so that he is fully facing Shiro, and when he looks up into his eyes he sees… _something._ The glint and glimmer in the dim light of the meeting room, his eyebrows dip, a frown mars his face far more than scars ever will, and Keith raises his hands.

Shiro’s eyes widen and he inhales sharply, gaze falling onto his hands, and Keith tenses up, freezing in place. “Keith?” Shiro asks, his voice as soft as smoke floating up into snowing clouds, and Keith stares at his own hands. “Are you okay? You’ve been talking about me, but what about you?”

_What about me?_

His hands finally reach up and he cups Shiro’s cheeks, brings his head down so that they may press their foreheads together, and Keith exhales. “Don’t worry about that,” he hears the tsk from Shiro, his eyes open wide and burning with the need to retaliate, so he keeps going, “don’t worry about me, or this, or the Blade of Marmora. You don’t have to worry about us, any of us. We’ll be fine.”

“And what if you’re not?” Shiro challenges. “What if you all take it too far? What if you do a mission where the goal is to make the impossible, possible? We have _Voltron,_ Keith. No amount of relaxing I do –”

“Then don’t think about me.”

Silence rings like a mourner’s hymn, and Shiro is placing his hands atop of Keith’s. His fingers curl around his wrists, grip tightening before relaxing, and those glimmering, wet eyes aren’t looking into Keith’s anymore. “I can’t stop thinking.” Shiro admits in the softness around them. Keith can still hear the funeral march, the songs the remaining blades have been singing, and he looks into the face of the champion before him.

“Just trust me, Shiro.” he says, even if the words are hissed out through grit teeth. “Just – don’t think for a second, okay? Focus on – focus on me. No – _don’t worry about me._ ” he barks out and Shiro flinches, his eyes fluttering shut, and Keith is still holding onto his face, pressing his forehead against his, and still standing tall even as Shiro slumps further into his space.

“You’re so small,” Shiro sobs out finally, something cracking open in his chest and breaking through into his voice, and Keith exhales, “I know – I know it’s, it’s because your – your… I _know,_ I know why it is. But you’re _small._ You’re so young, and small, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

He moves his fingers in minute strokes across Shiro’s cheeks, angles his palms so that he can wipe the stray tears away with his thumbs, and the grip on his wrists are absolutely loose. “You’re so _young._ ”

_“You’re too young to be a Commander.” one of the blades argue. “Krolia – he’s just a child, both human **and** Galra! We can’t have him take your place.”_

_“My son has piloted Voltron, what makes you think him unfit for such a position?”_

_“Inexperience in everything else.”_

The loose claws around his wrists fall, instead coming to settle on his back as Shiro wraps his arms around him and holds him close, taking him into a tight embrace, and he slips away from Keith’s face to instead bury his own into his shoulder. “It hurts,” Shiro murmurs, his voice muffled into his shoulder, “my head – my heart – _everything_ hurts. I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

Keith moves his own hands down to return the embrace and he gently scoots them both along, until they are near the meeting table and away from the window out in the dark depths, and he gently pushes Shiro along until he takes a seat at the table. He sits on the table, across Shiro, and crosses his legs over each other. “You don’t have to suffer alone,” he presses his thumbs together and Shiro shrugs listlessly, “you don’t, I mean it. There – there are so many people who care for you right now.”

He reaches over to run his fingers through Shiro’s hair, though he is quick to retract his hands so that he can take his gloves off and throw them away to the corner. That sparks some brief giggles from Shiro, ripped out from surprise thanks to how viciously Keith has thrown them away, and their eyes meet.

Tarnished silver meets molten gold, and Shiro is looking up at him with the resounding confusion and lost gaze of a boy in the midst of a desert planet, where he is surrounded only by sandstorms and burrowing worms. He looks at him like the child in the books that his mother have shown him in her attempts to get him to learn Galran, where the little boy wanders off into the sandstorms and comes back with hunched back and tired eyes.

His hand settles on Shiro’s hair and he ruffles it like how his own have been ruffled, sparking more surprised, sputtering laughter from him, and Keith grins even as he is being pushed away. There is only a few more moments of laughter before silence creeps its way in again, an old friend becoming an unwelcome guest quickly in this empty, dim room.

“Why do you only tell me how you feel?” Keith asks after a few more moments in the tense, awkward quiet, and Shiro nearly leaps out of his seat from the question. It is only by Keith’s hands on his shoulders forcing him down that he doesn’t bolt away, though he can feel the way his shoulders are squared and how his muscles refuse to relax. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I really gotta know. Why do you only tell me?”

He inhales shakily. “Because you – you won’t… you won’t ever tell me I’m wrong, you won’t push me away. You won’t tell the others.” Keith’s fingers curl into his shoulders, pressing into knots, and Shiro looks up at him apologetically.

“You’re only half-correct, you know?” he hisses out, his hands shaking with how harshly he is digging into Shiro’s shoulders, but he isn’t being pushed away and there are no protests, and he grits his teeth as he removes his hands just as the claws are about to make themselves known. “I won’t tell anyone on Voltron unless I absolutely have to.”

Shiro huffs in amusement. “Like a therapist.” he says bitterly. “Confidential, unless – well.”

“No, not only because of that. But because of everything else – look, if you won’t tell everyone what’s bothering you, if you won’t tell them what’s swimming in that brain of yours… at least tell Coran about the headaches, okay?” when he doesn’t get a response, he keeps going, “he’s not an expert on human anatomy but… just let him do something about the headaches. They could be stress migraines.”

“Probably.” Shiro says just as one hand comes to rub at his temple, his eyes still wet as he looks up at Keith though they are now very clearly red, the whites taken over by agitated veins. “I’m sorry for dumping this all on you but I can’t stop thinking about the Galran empire – something feels… so wrong.”

He scratches the back of his neck, wincing briefly as his claws scrape against the base of his skull. “It’s just the stress, I promise. A too good to be true, right? Nothing’s going to go wrong. Everything’s going well, right? You’re leading everyone so well, and Allura’s slotting in place just fine. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

Something in his heart twists when Shiro gives him that doubtful look while he nibbles his lower lip, and it is as if someone has twisted a dagger in Keith’s gut when he says, “I hope you’re right, Keith. I really, really hope you’re right.”

 

 

 

 

 

And in the end, Keith doesn’t end up being right.

He has a new scar to show for it.


End file.
